AS the frontman of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the world’s biggest band,
Anthony Kiedis was also the wildest hellraiser in rock ‘n’ roll.

At 11, he lost his virginity to his dad’s 18-year-old girlfriend, first
injected coke at 14 and nearly killed himself after driving his mum’s car
into a tree at 90mph while drunk, leaving him with a smashed skull, a broken
eye-socket and “looking like a plate of spaghetti and meatballs”.

Kiedis, a sex-obsessed heroin addict for years, was once fined more than
£1,200 for sexual battery and indecent exposure after a female student
claimed he’d dangled his privates in her face in the dressing-room after a
gig.

But today, the 48-year-old sex symbol says his only addiction is his
three-year-old son Everly Bear and that the youngster is keeping him on the
straight and narrow.

Although clean of drugs and drink since 2000, Anthony says: “As every heroin
addict will know, temptation is always there. But becoming a father has
given me a reason to live and stay clean for good.”

Anthony first tried to quit drugs in 1988 after losing the band’s original
guitarist, 26-year-old Hillel Slovak through a heroin overdose, but relapsed
five years later.

He says: “Every day since has been a battle to stay clean, but my son makes me
thankful that I am. I feel very lucky.”

And the star says his lad — named after one of his favourite bands, The Everly
Brothers — also impacted positively on the Chili Peppers’ latest album, I’m
With You.

He says: “Having Everly has changed my life. You can hear the new energy I
have, we have, on the new album.”

Becoming a father has meant Anthony has reflected on his relationship with his
own dad, actor and Hollywood drug dealer Blackie Dammett, born John Kiedis.

Not your average father, Blackie supplied drugs to and partied with rock stars
including Led Zeppelin and The Who’s Keith Moon, movie icons and other
celebrities, exposing Anthony to sex and drugs from a young age.

Just three years ago, the 71-year-old told a BBC documentary: “It wasn’t so
unusual that I let him take a little bit of acid, or a little bit of
marijuana.”

Anthony’s parents split when he was three and at 11 he moved from Michigan,
where he had lived with his mum Peggy, to LA to live with his father. Just a
few days later, his dad offered him his first joint of cannabis.

Then one night just before his 12th birthday, he arranged for Anthony, who was
high on prescription drug quaalude, to lose his virginity with HIS
girlfriend, an 18-year-old called Kimberly, in HIS bed.

But Anthony is forgiving. He smiles and says: “I know whatever my father did,
in his own way, he still loved me.

“Even though we don’t communicate as fluently as I do with my son, he still
has the same feeling for me that I have for my boy. And I should be a little
more patient.”

Renownd in the industry for being a difficult interviewee, Anthony is
surprisingly good-humoured, telling stories about how Everly is a bundle of
energy and keeps him on his toes and laughing at how his young son also
likes to sing.

He says: “I don’t know what songs he’s got in his head but he likes to make
some noise!

“The fact my relationship with my son is so good makes me forgiving of my
father and also appreciative.

“Now I can look back and say I actually like the upbringing I had and my
father was very attentive and a great educator.

“He just didn’t have the same tools I have today and there was no way he could
have acquired them at that point in time. So, yeah, I forgive him for his
mistakes and I thank him for giving me so much of his time and energy.“

Anthony says reading Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road —
charting the journey of a man and his young son in a post-apocalyptic world
— made him more understanding of his role as a father and of his
relationship with his dad.

“I read that book within a month of my son being born which was quite magical
for me and blew my mind,” Anthony explains.

“There’s just an apocalyptic hell to survive through and you feel the love of
that father for his son. Even though there’s nothing much to live for,
except caring for someone.

“I love my son and will always be there for him and I know that’s how my dad
feels today about me.”

Anthony admits he still struggles to find the right woman and properly settle
down.

He split with Everly’s mother — model Heather Christie — in 2008 and although
he has dated some of Hollywood’s most beautiful women, including supermodel
Heidi Klum, actress Bijou Phillips and film director Sofia Coppola, he has
found it difficult to get close to someone special.

He reveals: “I find it hard to meet the right woman as people assume I’m a
certain type of person — which I’m not.

“It’s been hard. I meet people and they say things like ‘I’d never go out with
someone like you, I know who you are’. But they don’t know who I am.

“I run into that a lot with people and so the tragic thing in relationships is
that I never get a fair shake because of that preconceived idea of who
people think I am. So I’m trying at all costs to avoid the pitfall of having
the relationship based on ideas formed from my past.

“I hope someone can open their mind and rediscover who I really am rather than
who they think I am.”

After 28 years with the Red Hot Chili Peppers — during which they have sold
more than 65million albums, Anthony calls them “my other family”.

I’m With You is their first album in five years and Anthony is happy to be
back with the band.

He says the year ahead will be a happy one with “lots of touring but enough
breaks to allow them time to enjoy it and not get burned out”.

Anthony also admits there was some heartache in making this, their tenth
album, when he lost a close friend, an event that inspired track Brendan’s
Death Song.

It was written about Brendan Mullen, the owner of LA club The Masque, who died
suddenly after suffering a stroke in 2009. Anthony says: “He was a very good
friend and an important guy.

“All the LA punk kids who were disenfranchised from other forms of music at
that time and wanted to tap into this other kind of music went to his club.

“He facilitated that and promoted it. That was his nature — to embrace
cutting-edge music and give it a place to exist. So he was greatly admired
and a very humble guy.

“He was the first person to listen to a Chili Peppers demo tape and he
gave us our first gig. So we loved him for giving us that opportunity and it
was the beginning of a long relationship. We miss him terribly.

“But through the dark times there has been plenty of joy and that’s why now
life is all about celebrating.”

I’m With You is released in the UK on August 30.

Rock ‘n roll love life

ANTHONY’s tangled love life has included some of Tinseltown’s most beautiful
women. In the past, he has dated Heather Christie, Heidi Klum, Bijou
Phillips and Sofia Coppola.